Identifying the Educational Needs for Developing an Entrepreneurship-Based Curriculum from the Perspective of Students and Faculty Members of Health-Associated Disciplines

Background: The most fundamental step in the development of a curriculum is to determine the educational needs. This study aims to identify the educational needs from the viewpoint of students and faculty members of health-associated disciplines in order to develop an entrepreneurship-based curriculum. Methods: The study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of method. Moreover, needs assessment is based on inductive-comparative model. The research population included top-level documents, research literature, and all students and faculty members of the faculty of health affiliated to Birjand University of Medical Sciences during the academic year 2017-2018. Based on Krejcie and Morgan's table, the sample size was computed as 218 people, who were selected randomly. Moreover, 20 faculty members were incorporated by census. Data were collected by reviewing top-level policy-associated documents, reviewing the related literature, and conducting a needs assessment. The questionnaire for needs assessment comprised of 49 items. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by health education and medical education experts. The reliability of the questionnaire was obtained using Cronbach's alpha as 79%. Data were analyzed in SPSS software-version 16 using descriptive statistics (mean). Results: The results showed that entrepreneurial education and knowledge with the mean score 4.38 and entrepreneurship-oriented social environment of the faculty of health with the mean score 4.10, as reported respectively by students and faculty members, were the two main educational need priorities for the health curriculum. Conclusion: According to the findings, designing and developing a curriculum that can increase the entrepreneurship power and train creative and innovative students at the faculty of health is one of the main needs of students.